Child of the Sword

by J. L. Doty

  “Look,” Abileen said, pointing down at the road. “Here they come.”

  JohnEngine turned back to the road. A little earlier Illalla’s lead patrol of Kulls had ridden past scouring the road before the oncoming army, and now in the distance they could see Illalla riding at the head of the main column. JohnEngine looked at the Balenda. “But what more can we do, Cort? I thought we’ve been doing great.”

  Tulellcoe shook his head and answered him. “Illalla’s been one step ahead of us all the way.”

  The Balenda’s face twisted with hatred and she looked up into the sky. “It’s that snake of his, hovering about in the clouds, watching us.”

  “But we’ve been successful,” JohnEngine argued. “We’ve struck at him a half dozen times in the last four days, and his army’s barely moving at a crawl now.”

  The usually silent Surriot spoke up. “Thanks to our protector,” he said flatly.

  JohnEngine turned on him angrily. “What do you mean, our protector?”

  “Haven’t you sensed him, John?” Tulellcoe asked, “Hovering about nearby. He’s been watching us as closely as he’s been watching Illalla. He saved us this morning from that Kull ambush. That rock that landed in the trail in front of us didn’t just drop out of the sky. It was thrown, as a warning, and it served its purpose, for if we’d continued on those Kulls would have cut us to pieces. It wasn’t as dramatic as the first time he saved us, but it did the job.”

  “The first time he saved us?” JohnEngine asked. “You don’t mean that monster is protecting us in some way?”

  Tulellcoe shrugged, turned to look down at the road. “All I really know is that we’ve only been marginally effective, and in fact would already be dead twice were it not for our protector.”

  “But Illalla’s army is moving at a crawl,” JohnEngine pleaded. “His foot soldiers look as if they haven’t slept in days, as if they’re about to collapse in the road.”

  Tulellcoe looked at him carefully, frowned, then twisted slightly to shout over his shoulder at the men. “Packwill. Please come here.”

  The scout rose slowly to his feet and joined the small council of war, though Tulellcoe continued to look at the advancing army down on the road as he spoke to JohnEngine. “Haven’t you noticed the graves they leave behind each morning when they break camp? They’re scattered all the way up and down the length of their encampment. And there’s always two twelves of them, never more, never less.”

  JohnEngine frowned. “That is odd. I’d noticed the graves but I hadn’t counted them. I assumed Illalla’s men were fighting among themselves.”

  Tulellcoe shook his head thoughtfully. “Not yet, though that’ll begin soon. Packwill. Tell Lord JohnEngine what you did this morning and what you found.”

  The scout looked uncomfortable as he spoke. “Like you told me, my lord, I took two men and dug up a couple of them graves.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Their throats was cut. Probably in their sleep. No other marks on ‘em.”

  Tulellcoe pointed at the army below. “Those men are afraid to go to sleep at night. Someone or something sneaks into their camp with impunity and cuts throats at random, and Illalla is powerless to stop him. He’s quadrupled the perimeter guard, and still it continues. And last night the desertions began; two or three twelves of his men snuck off into the forest. Tonight that number will probably double, and soon they’ll begin fighting among themselves.”

  “Look,” the Balenda said suddenly, pointing. “Down on the road. This side of that sharp bend in the road. Do you see it?”

  They all turned to look intently at the road, but JohnEngine could see nothing at the point the woman indicated. Illalla’s army was approaching from the north, but she was pointing to a spot some distance from a sharp bend in the road that would yet be out of sight of the High Lord and his men.

  “What did you see, Cort?” Tulellcoe asked.

  “I don’t know. It was like a horseman, a mounted rider wearing a long black cloak, but it wasn’t. He came out of the shadows at the edge of the road, rode some distance up the road, then disappeared into the shadows again.” She shook her head and frowned thoughtfully. “There was the oddest thing about him, as if he and his horse were themselves shadows.”

  Suddenly it all came together in JohnEngine’s mind. “What did you say?” he demanded. She started to say it again but he waved her off. “No, I heard what you said. You said shadows.”

  Behind her France smiled and shook his head. “You know, JohnEngine me lad, sometimes yer not very quick.”

  “You don’t mean Morgin?” JohnEngine demanded. “He’s not even here.”

  Abileen spoke up. “He crossed alone, your lordship. At Kallun’s Gorge. The night before the rest of you came.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  The soldier shrugged. “I figured you knew. And he told me not to speak of it. And when I heard he was under sentence of death, I figured best to keep my mouth shut.”

  Suddenly JohnEngine understood. He hadn’t sensed Morgin’s presence because he was so used to having him nearby. It was like not noticing the air itself, though he still sucked it into his lungs.

  “He’s always around us,” Packwill said. “Sometimes I hear a twig break and there’s no one there, like he’s one of the shadows himself. Maybe he is the ShadowLord, finally come to life.”

  “Of course not,” JohnEngine said. “That’s a tale to frighten small children. You’re a grown man, Packwill. You know better than that. The ShadowLord doesn’t really exist.”

  Abileen shrugged, tilted his head slightly to one side. “Well maybe he does now, my lord.”

  “There he is,” the Balenda said, again pointing down to the road.

  This time they all saw him; he’d trotted his horse out into the middle of the road and there brought it to a stop. The apparition of a horse and rider obscured by shadows in broad daylight where no shadows should have been sent a shiver up JohnEngine’s spine. But then suddenly the shadows disappeared, and what remained was no less frightening: a lone black rider in a hooded black cloak atop a coal black mount. Illalla and his army were still beyond the bend in the road and had yet to see the rider waiting for them, his horse abnormally still, his sword drawn and gripped in one hand hanging casually at his side. It was the rider’s arrogance that was most frightening, for he waited alone in the middle of the road for the oncoming army.

  “He’s playing a game with Illalla,” Tulellcoe said. “A game of terror. And I think we’re about to see it ratcheted up to a new level.”

  ~~~

  Morgin waited in the middle of the road trying to control the pounding of his heart. He could sense Illalla in the distance and the Kulls and the clansmen that accompanied him. Soon, Illalla and his men would round the bend in the road and find themselves confronted with a long, straight, narrow stretch, empty of everything but a single black rider seated on a black horse standing arrogantly in the middle of the road wearing a hooded black cloak. He had chosen this spot carefully for just that effect.

  It had taken Morgin quite a while to fashion the hood from a strip torn from the bottom of a cloak he’d taken from a Kull he’d recently killed. His trail kit included a needle and thread, but he was not trained in their use for anything beyond quick repairs, and from up close the results were poor. But it only needed to look good from a distance, and if the game he’d chosen to play was to have the desired effect, the hood was mandatory, for in the children’s tales the ShadowLord always wore a hooded cloak. It would also serve to shadow his face in the bright sun, adding further to the illusion. Illalla, of course, and the noblemen with him, would not believe that the ShadowLord had come to life, but common soldiers were, by nature, a superstitious lot, and this day Morgin intended to leave them with a story of their own to tell.

  Suddenly the main column of the Decouix army rounded the bend in the road. Morgin waited a good distance down the road, well out of bow shot, and of course
the Kull patrol had already passed, so they expected the road to be empty and did not, at first, notice him. They continued to advance for some seconds, but then one of the noblemen near Illalla stood up in his stirrups and pointed. Morgin saw the nobleman’s lips move, but the distance was too great to hear his words.

  Now they all took notice of him, and Morgin held tightly to Mortiss’ reins, for the image he wanted them to remember was a rider and horse standing with unnatural stillness. Illalla hesitated, allowing more of his army to round the bend, but then he raised his hand and slowly brought the advance to a stop.

  Illalla turned to the nobleman who had first sighted Morgin and said something. Moments later the nobleman and two Kulls left the main column and rode towards Morgin at a trot. They stopped a good distance away and the nobleman shouted, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Morgin held his silence, and Mortiss cooperated by remaining perfectly still.

  “Speak up,” the nobleman shouted angrily.

  Again Morgin held his silence. But finally, his patience exhausted, the nobleman turned to the two Kulls and said something. The Kulls both drew their swords and spurred their horses forward into a side-by-side charge.

  Morgin had picked this spot with extreme care. Not far from him, between him and the charging Kulls, the branches of a large oak tree extended well out over the road, casting the road and the shallow ditches on both sides in a mottled patchwork of sunlight and shadows that shifted constantly with the soft breezes in the tree tops. He and Mortiss stood statue still while the Kulls charged, for his timing must be perfect, and not until the two halfmen were at full charge did he finally touch his spurs to Mortiss. But to everyone’s surprise he merely nudged her into an easy trot, and he didn’t even bring up his sword.

  He reached the mottled shadows in the road two heartbeats before the Kulls, and in that instant he cast a deep shadow over him and Mortiss and pulled her suddenly off the road into the shadowed ditch. He knew it would appear as if he’d suddenly vanished into thin air.

  The Kulls were as startled as everyone else, and in mid charge they sat up in their saddles, lowered their swords and let their horses run slowly down to a trot, passing swiftly through the shadows beneath the tree and out the other side. They came to a complete stop, turned their mounts and looked about quizzically. The nobleman stood up in his stirrups and shouted, “Where is he? Where’d he go?”

  One of the Kulls raised his arms in an exaggerated shrug. The nobleman spurred his horse forward into a trot, passed through the shadows in the road and joined the two Kulls. They looked around for a few moments, then turned and began trotting back toward Illalla and the main column, and as they passed back through the shadows Morgin pulled Mortiss silently into step behind them. The nobleman and the two Kulls passed unknowingly into the sunlight, and as Morgin followed them he quenched his shadowmagic so that it would seem to everyone that he had reappeared just as suddenly as he’d vanished. He gave Illalla and the main column just one instant to see him, then he raised his sword, spurred Mortiss hard, and charged between the two Kulls, beheading them with two quick strokes of his sword. He continued the charge, driving Mortiss into the unwary nobleman’s mount with enough force to knock horse and rider to the ground.

  The nobleman fell in a sprawl. His horse got up faster than he and trotted away in a panic. Morgin brought Mortiss to a stop over the nobleman, leaned over and put the tip of his sword at the man’s throat, but said nothing. The nobleman took one moment to look back and see the two headless Kulls sprawled in the road, then he looked into the black shadows of Morgin’s hooded face. There was fear in the man’s eyes, but he controlled it nicely. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The shadows within the hood were quite natural, so Morgin cast a shadowspell over his face and head, then slowly reached up with his free hand and slid the hood back. And when the nobleman saw that even after he’d withdrawn the hood all that remained were shadows, his eyes widened and his control broke. This time his voice came out in a trembling whisper, “What are you?”

  Morgin had thought carefully how he would speak when the time came, and he spoke now in a low-pitched growl. “Tell Illalla I am the beast that walks the night. Tell him I am the shadow that brings death to his men’s dreams. Tell him I am the ShadowLord, and that soon I will come to his dreams.” And with that Morgin lifted his sword, trotted Mortiss back into the shadows, and vanished before the nobleman’s eyes.

  ~~~

  That night Morgin made his usual visit to Illalla’s camp, but this time he killed all of the guards surrounding Illalla’s tent. He wanted to leave the impression that he could have killed Illalla, though he knew that in fact he could not, not with Bayellgae close at hand. And even had Bayellgae been absent, Illalla was a powerful sorcerer, far more powerful than Morgin. But the impression would remain, at least as far as Illalla’s men were concerned, that the ShadowLord was invincible to the point where he could toy with the High Lord of the Greater Clans. And perhaps even Illalla would begin to doubt some of his own power.

  The next day Morgin again met Illalla on the road, and played out his role as the mythical ShadowLord. This time Illalla did not hesitate, but sent a dozen Kulls charging up the road after him. Morgin slipped into the shadows at the edge of the road, waited for the Kulls to stop and start milling about in confusion, appeared in their midst, cut two of them down and disappeared again. He did that several times, and in a confusion of shadows and darkness, he cut the halfmen down one by one. That night more than two hundred men deserted Illalla’s army even before Morgin slit his usual quota of throats.

  Morgin checked on Tulellcoe and his men quite regularly, usually slipping into their camp in the early evening and the early morning hours. They were badly divided now, for France and Tulellcoe were of the opinion that the best thing they could do was stay out of the way so that Morgin would not have to divide his attention between protecting them and terrorizing Illalla’s army. The Balenda and JohnEngine, however, wanted to continue to harass the Decouix.

  The next morning, with the sun still low on the horizon, and the shadows from the trees slanting sharply across the road, Morgin chose a stretch of road and slipped into the shadows to wait for Illalla. The High Lord now had three Kull patrols scouring the road ahead of his army. Morgin watched them pass by several times, and their frequency forced him to wait until Illalla was much closer than usual before spurring Mortiss out onto the road.

  He decided to give Illalla and his men a bit of a show, and this time held his shadowmagic strongly in place even as Mortiss carried him out into the daylight, and it was that, and Mortiss, that saved his life.

  Illalla reacted instantly. Morgin could hear him shout, “There he is. Now,” and too late Morgin realized he was much too close.

  Two bowmen, riding beside the High Lord, raised their bows and fired almost as one. Both arrows sliced through the air toward Morgin and there was no time for him to react, but at the last instant Mortiss reared beneath him, rearing high and placing herself between him and the death slicing toward him. The first shaft caught her squarely in the breast; the second slipped past her and buried itself in the meat of Morgin’s left armpit.

  Morgin almost lost consciousness then and there; it was all he could do to ignore the pain and hold on as Mortiss screamed and collapsed beneath him, sending him sprawling into the shadows at the side of the road. The arrow in his armpit snapped off painfully as he slammed into the ground, leaving a short length of shaft buried beneath his skin, though somehow through the pain he managed to hold onto his shadowmagic.

  He staggered to his feet in the shadows at the side of the road as a dozen Kulls charged toward him, glanced over his shoulder once but could see nothing of Mortiss where she had collapsed in the road. Fighting to hold onto consciousness and his shadowmagic he slipped into the trees and started working his way up the road.

  The Kulls reached the spot where he’d gone down, split up and began searching in the shadows wi
th their swords. Morgin found a small game trail that made his going easier, though he was bleeding profusely and his head swam. As he staggered up the trail he started calling for power, digging into the netherworld for it, tugging desperately at any he found. He managed to stop some of the bleeding, and lessened the pain somewhat, but he knew he would not get far on foot. And then suddenly, there in the trail before him, standing there and blocking his path, was Mortiss.

  She seemed unhurt, and he assumed the arrow must have missed her, though by so narrow a margin it appeared to all she had been killed. Morgin found it near impossible to climb up into her saddle, but he managed it nevertheless. He turned her away from the Kulls still searching the shadows on the road behind him, spurred her lightly, and as she broke into a trot he leaned forward against her neck and passed out.

  ~~~

  “There’s something wrong here,” Tulellcoe said as they crossed the shallows at Gilguard’s Ford.

  JohnEngine could sense it too, an uneasiness in his soul as if there were some terrible danger nearby. It had come upon them only when their horses hooves had stepped into the waters of the Ford, then disappeared as soon as they were out of it.

  Tulellcoe barked out orders. “John, Cort, Val. Stay here with me.” He looked at France. “Take the men down the road a piece, but keep us in sight. There’s something magical here, and I want to know what.”

  France nodded. “Don’t take long though. Illalla’s not far behind us.” He led the men a safe distance down the road.

  Tulellcoe dismounted. John and the Surriot and the Balenda followed suit. “Cort, Val. Take the other side of the river. John and I’ll take this side. Start working your way up river and keep your eyes open.”